Not-a-Lemming : politics

Bureaucracy In Action

FutbolGuru — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:30:00 GMT

I was looking over my posts the other day and said to myself, "Futbol Guru, you sure have become cynical." So I've been thinking about my attitude and trying to decide if I'm being fair or if I've gotten into a rut.

Well it's always possible to focus on doom and gloom. My lovely wife often accuses me of having gotten into a habit of seeing only the negative. And there is much to what she says. In fact, I am by nature a very optimistic person. I am always hoping for the best - which is a trap because "the best" rarely happens. When I tell her that she just frowns. Maybe she's right. Maybe I do tend to focus on the negative. At the same time, when you're headed for a cliff the global negative in your future tends to outweigh any local positives. I suppose there is a school of thought that prases the lemming who turns to his running-mate and comments on the beautiful weather. Fortunately I didn't go to that school.

The Obama administration continues to surprise me and I was especially astounded this very morning. And no, I'm not being cynical. On the way in to work I heard on the radio that President Obama has directed the Attorney General to drop all charges against Senator Ted Stevens, effectively throwing out his indictment. Honestly I don't know whether the man is guilty or not. I know he's an idiot and doesn't know the difference between the internet and a series of tubes but that doesn't make him guilty of accepting bribes.

What I wonder is why the government spent millions of dollars bringing the case against him, effectively handing his senate seat to a challenger from the other party, and then decided the case was indefensible. And how many other senate and house seats were affected by the bad press as a result of the scandal that apparently never existed in the first place? I really don't care anymore what party did what to whom. The point here is that the citizenry has a very good reason for their utter lack of faith in government because there are only two possibilities here. 1) An indefensible case was successfully prosecuted against an innocent man or, 2) charges were trumped up by the opposition part to gain a Senate seat. Either way the conclusion is inescapable.

Bureaucracy. What is it? We know its effect - corruption, inefficiency, and grid lock. But we don't often think about the actual causes of bureaucracy. Consider cancer as an example. We know what cancer does, and for a long time we just treated the symptoms. The patient (sometimes) survived a little longer and was (sometimes) more comfortable, but the end result was the same with or without treatment. Only now are we beginning to understand what causes cancer: mutations in cellular DNA that lead to rapid, uncontrolled, cellular growth. And with understanding new treatments are coming.

Though very similar in effect to cancer, Bureaucracy is much easier to understand. And as can be done with many things in life, to get at the root cause we will begin at the effect and step backwards until we find it. Soof the way science works, or following the money trail.

First Step Back: Bureaucracy comes from government officials making bad decisions. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Second Step Back:These decisions can be bad either because the official making them is incompetent, or they can be bad because they are driven by political considerations rather than attempts to address an actual problem. E.g., Lets prosecute Ted Stevens to get his Senate seat.

Third Step Back: So the people making the decisions are either a) incompetent, or b) politicized. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Fourth Step Back: This is where it starts getting muddy. The point in science where there are more unknowns than equations. Or where the laundered money comes back clean. How does an incompetent person get himself elected to public office? One way is to be the son of a former President (Bush). Or Senator (Gore). Or have a butt-load of cash (Bloomberg).This used to be called dynastic succession and is one of the reasons we fought a conflict called the Revolutionary War. Regrettably Dynastic Succession seems to have come back in to fashion, maybe because we stopped teaching history in schools.

Another way to get elected if you don't happen to be royalty is to say the right things, to the right people, in the right way. Like eloquently articulating the need for substantive change (aka - politics) in a melodious baritone (Obama). Or demanding a return to family values (Bush).

Once the desire for efficient government administrated by honest public servants is supplanted by politics or heredity in the minds of the people, as has happened in America, you wind up with incompetent people in positions of power making decisions for all the wrong reasons. The results are catastrophic. Invading the wrong country. Deregulation of the banking and investment industry. Laws to limit entrepreneurship. Presidents trying to run car companies. Prosecutions aimed at gaining control over government institutions. Trillions of dollars transferred from the poor to the rich. National economies at the mercy of enviro-political activists.

Where will it end? When will it end? Will we as a nation continue to run head long over that cliff, driven forward by fear and paranoia created and exploited by those who would profit from our deaths? Or will we, as a people, come to our senses and curtail the power of the parties. We can do it. The internet has taken the power of information away from the media and given it to the people. This very blog is a manifestation of freedom in action. But will we use it? Lord knows we could all use something to give us hope. I'm tired of being cynical. But then again, maybe I'm not cynical. Maybe I'm just reporting the truth.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

The Religious Wrong and The Republican Retreat

FutbolGuru — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:31:00 GMT

Limbaugh was calling it, “…the end of the Democratic Party.” And so it might have seemed in 1994 to a party awash in victory and full of the hubris that comes with it. President Clinton had overreached with his gun control measures and secret health care meetings. His past was catching up with him – the affairs, the secret trysts, the not-so-secret trysts. He was lifting the ban on homosexuals in the military, giving the go-ahead on state-funded abortions, and had placed a number of far-left liberals in cabinet positions. The knee-jerk was swift with the Senate and the House of Representatives swinging to Republican control in an unprecedented single election.

And what was the overriding campaign message of the Republicans who swept to power? Family values. Almost to a person they claimed strong Christian values and a need to return to honesty and temperance in politics. And they were right. The flood was vast and nationwide at all levels of government, religious conservatives took offices from dog catcher all the way to Speaker of the House.

For a few years it seemed the nation had made a good choice. Certainly honest politicians are better than dishonest ones. And the old guard Democrats, in power for forty years, had lowered the bar of corruption to new depths. But in the end it was all an illusion. The Democrats who’d become so corrupt weren’t corrupt because they were Democrats, they were corrupt because their party had been in power for forty years and that’s what happens to any party in power for forty years. The Chinese have a saying, whom the gods wish to destroy they give forty years of success. Except in the case of the Religious Right it only took about fifteen.

So what happened? How did the Religious Right turn out to be the Religious Wrong? Within a few short years the new conservatives had become every bit as corrupt as their Democratic counterparts with affairs, lies, and scandals, even to the point of invading the wrong country! That’s a pretty big mistake. For a party with God on its side the fall was precipitous and catastrophic.

The answer is really quite simple and is based on the difference between religion and spirituality. While it is unfashionable to discuss politics and Bible in the same breath in this country, it is impossible to understand either without doing so. Religion is a system of rites and practices which dictate the practices of a group. Spirituality is a deep-seated, philosophical viewpoint that defines the worldview of an individual. Religion is a group activity. Spirituality is individual. The Religious Right was religious but not spiritual, a fact that is easily proven by their habits.

There was a time in this nation when the term Christianity went hand in hand with moderation. Not moderate in the political sense, but moderate as an approach to life, which is the basis of the message given by the founder of Christianity, none other than Jesus. Whether or not one believes Jesus was the son of God, it is very difficult to deny his historicity and his message of love and moderation. Indeed, one of his more well-known statements is that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. He went on to say that this didn’t forbid wealth, but that wealth made the Christian walk very precarious.

In my experience with Christians over the last few decades however, very few of them practice moderation at any level in their lives. Indeed, they consider wealth – the very thing that Jesus said would keep them out of Heaven – as a blessing from God. From their houses, to their lifestyles, to their cars, to their kids, there are no practical differences between Christians and non-Christians. There is a lower incidence of sexual promiscuity among Christians and a mandatory Sunday morning club meeting, but that’s about it. And since they are every bit as fixated on wealth as their non-Christian counterparts, they also lack the one thing that Jesus said would set them apart from others; love.

The Religious Right that took over Congress in 1994 brought very little of the L-word to Washington. They did bring a lot of ideas about how a person should live their life, but other than their mandatory Sunday morning meeting and a strong outward revulsion to homosexuality, there was very little difference between them and their Democratic counterparts, many of whom also went to Church regularly.

I’ll go back to the Bible again. And this is important because whether or not you believe the Bible, it describes the lifestyle and philosophy that the Religious Right claim to embrace. Love, the Bible says, is essential to everything a Christian does. Indeed, without love, the scriptures go on to say, everything else a Christian might do will sound like a clanging cymbal. Now my son plays the cymbals in band, and I can tell you right now there is nothing more jarring and cacophonous than him walking through the house bashing those things together. The only thing you want is for him to STOP. And that was the reaction to the Religious Right when they came to town with their seemingly chaste lives yet were just as hooked on riches as anyone else and entirely devoid of love. They were a clanging cymbal. And it got old.

To make matters worse, they also brought a healthy dose of self-righteousness. While the Bible clearly states that it is those who are poor in spirit who will receive the Kingdom of Heaven, our new leaders and their ardent supporters across the hinterland were utterly convinced that God was on their side. And nowhere was this more apparent than in the actions of George II and many of his supporters who, I believe, felt he was ordained by the Almighty to smite the Arabs. It was on this basis that, even when it was glaringly obvious that he had invaded a nation unjustly and hundreds of thousands died, he remained convinced he had done the right thing. It wasn’t his decision, it was God’s, so how could it be wrong. After all, he prayed about it.

There are those who believe in a God and those who don’t. Those who profess Christianity and those who don’t. But for any of these groups it can’t be debated that true Christian behavior – social habits which are often practiced by other religions too – results in more efficient government, more honest business practices, and more peaceful interaction between people. Honesty, kindness, and mercy go a long way. But love and moderation are central to Christianity, and when you leave these out the philosophy becomes nothing more than a way to control groups of people and gain an advantage over them, which various governments the world over have been doing for over 2,000 years now.

That is why the Religious Right became the Religious Wrong. And why they failed not only themselves but the entire nation. It is why they are no longer in power and indeed, why so many in the country and the world look at the Religious Right and turn their eyes from Christianity in general. Are they Christians? That’s not really up to me to decide, I’m not in charge of Christianity. But the next time you see some guy quoting from the Bible while trying to get himself elected just remember what Jesus had to say about politics: “ ”

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Changing Perspectives: Conclusion

FutbolGuru — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:42:00 GMT

We tend to forget that government, politics, and economics are not the same thing. The word politics and the phrase political party don’t even occur in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Nor is the word economy even implied in either of these documents. In fact, George Washington, the founder of our nation warned strongly against political parties and said little if anything about economics. Government are the structures by which a society is administered, how it’s laws are made, enforced, and adjudicated, and how officials are installed and removed from office. Politics is the way that groups of people leverage their numbers to wield authority and shape policy. And economics refers to a system by which goods and services are created, traded, and disseminated throughout a society. Naturally these structures are inter-related in how they are manifest and some are more tightly coupled than others but they are not equivalent to one another.

Capitalism is an economic structure based upon leveraging capital to increase its value. It is not related to either a representative form of government or the political parties which vie for control of a government. Nor is it directly related to the concepts of freedom and liberty. In an ideal system capital is invested in an enterprise with the result being an increase in value of that enterprise beyond the sum of the original value plus the investment. For instance, upgrading an assembly process might allow a manufacturer to produce more of a product at a higher quality than before so that more of the product can be sold. Profits rise and value increases. Its only relationship to freedom is the concept that the money belongs to the owners and investors so the profits belong to the owners and investors.

Free market capitalism is perhaps the simplest, most basic and pure economic system with its natural checks and balances based on supply and demand. That, however, doesn’t mean that it can exist under any set of conditions. Indeed, capitalism, like any other system, requires the right conditions to thrive and always walks a fine line between sliding into either feudalism on one side and fascism on the other. As soon as business owners and investors begin to view themselves as isolated systems there is a danger that feudalism will arise. On the other hand, when a free-market capitalist economy stumbles, the first response is often protectionism and government bailouts which can quickly lead to fascism. Either way the result is the same, a rapidly shrinking middle class and the disappearance of avenues from the lower to the upper class.

For market capitalism to thrive there must first be capital, resources, and a market. If there is no money, nothing to invest in, and no consumers there is no value. But these basic conditions are not the whole story. Simply investing capital and reaping rewards is no different than Pharaoh’s use of corvee labor or southern plantation owners prior to the Civil War. That was capitalism, too, but here in the West we generally consider it a bad form of capitalism because over thousands of years great men and women realized, and often died, for the idea that humans should be treated better than animals. And that is backed up in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of the founding fathers. What they realized is that there is a form of capitalism that can benefit everyone. A limited form of capitalism that lets the benefits of technology and the struggles of man to be shared by all who are willing to participate.

So how is this capitalism different than pure capitalism? Most importantly it recognizes that business concerns are not isolated systems but are part of a larger community. Not the community of businesses, but the community of employees, citizens, and states. After all, without employees, consumers, and a stable government, any kind of enterprise becomes extremely risky. When a rising tide lifts all boats those without boats drown. Community-based capitalism means that those with the largest boats throw life rings to those without. It is of course the job of the swimmers to grab take the life ring, but without this act, capitalism becomes feudalism. When the acquisition of personal wealth (aka, greed) becomes the principle occupation of a business owner or a group of investors, flowing success down to the masses is the first thing to be cut, people start drowning, and the system fails. And in the end, leaving government to throw the life lines only makes things worse.

Community-based capitalism also requires the people engaging in business transactions to follow a basic code of ethics and honesty. Investing is founded on agreements. When agreements cease to be honored in both word and spirit, mistrust and animosity are the natural result. When an investment is made a product is the natural expectation, whether that product is a good, a service, or even some kind of financial instrument. When no product is received, and no product was ever planned on the part of the business owner, or the product was so risky as to have been misrepresented, the system fails. When this happens investors become cautious and owners become protectionist. While those at the bottom of the system feel this failure most immediately, it nevertheless affects everyone and the economy stops growing.

There are other conditions necessary for capitalism to thrive but arguably none is more important than the concept of reward. It is deeply ingrained in our psyche that hard work and honest ambition should be met with increasing success; the rising tide. While this can’t be guaranteed, a boat with a hole in it is no good at all. Most people start with little or nothing. The only way they can move forward is through help from others, whether that help is direct investment or simply being given a chance. This isn’t charity to the poor. This is recognition of talent and ambition and a helping hand to realize potentials. New blood is the life blood of any enterprise. That is why America has stayed so innovative, the constant arrival of literal, new blood. It is just as true in business. True innovation almost always comes from the outside, because attacking problems in a unique way almost always comes from a different kind of thinking. Not everyone is ambitious and innovative, and most people realize when they aren’t, but for those who are, they must receive the help they need to succeed or they will simply stop trying at some point and a key driver of community-based capitalism is lost.

We’re a capitalist nation but we tried to be different. And for a long time we were. I’m not so foolish or idealistic as to believe that prior to 1950 American business was kind, charitable, and generous. However it is incontestable that the spirit of community that once pervaded this land is gone, or is only a faint glimmer of what it was. When someone starts an enterprise it is always hoped that riches will be the result, and this is natural, but should riches be the only desire? The idea of building something of lasting value that also serves the larger community seems to be gone to have been replaced by building a business as fast as possible, selling it for as much as possible, and moving to the beach. Not only does this mindset ignore the hard work of the employees who also built the business, the government that kept the economy stable while the business was growing, but most importantly it minimizes the many relationships formed over years of hard work – which often have no relationship to the business itself. Because when you move to the beach your friends don’t usually move with you, though they probably helped you along the way if only for emotional support. Undoubtedly the high divorce rate in America stems from this same phenomenon; if a relationship isn't profitable, it is cast aside with no more thought than a book that failed to deliver as hoped. And since this has been the plan all along - acquire, cash in, unplug - what does it say about the value of relationship and community? When greed is the only metric, money is the only thing that matters, and that is a very good way to describe relationships in modern America; money is the only thing that matters.

When money is the only thing that matters, honesty and ethics are nothing but inconvenient liabilities. As long as things are done legally – which generally means that the contract was written by a very slick lawyer – a business owner can retire with a ‘clean’ conscience. No matter that the financial system of the entire nation has been destroyed and countless boats have been torpedoed, no matter that untold resources have been sucked from a community, the beach house, college for kids, and vacations are secure. The elimination of greed and dishonesty as vices, and the elevation of them to a twisted virtue, has done more damage to this nation than any other single thing. Whether it is toxic mortgage assets, cashing out and pulling out, or driving the automotive market with unsustainable products, greed and dishonesty have crippled this nation. The only thing more damaging is that those responsible have been allowed to keep their winnings only making them, and their practices, all the more enviable.

So why should I, or anyone else who is ambitious and innovative, work hard for a reward? There was a time when nepotism was looked down upon. It happens sure, and it’s only natural to want to leave something for the family. But when that legacy eliminates the just-as-natural cycle of hard work and reward, innovation will pay the price. But cashing in and pulling out can’t happen as fast when there are other boats in the picture. Far easier to make the anchor chain of others so short that their boats flood and sink. After all it is very easy to say that, “Success isn’t a guarantee,” and wash one’s hands of the matter. And this problem is only exacerbated by those who’ve enjoyed their success through dishonesty or cronyism. Those who’ve cheated are not generally disposed to helping others, and those who’ve been granted their lordship have no empathy for those still struggling. In fact, they usually feel they’ve lifted themselves by their own bootstraps and advise others to do the same.

Dwindling access to resources. Wealth hoarding. Lack of community. Dishonest and unethical behavior. More work for ever less or no reward. The failure to punish those responsible for fraud and waste. Toxic politics. Corrupt government. Public money used to sustain the dying enterprises of swindlers. Nepotism and cronyism. Hedonism. Materialism. Selfishness. Paranoia. Relationship abandonment. The conclusion is only too obvious. The conditions for healthy capitalism no longer exist in America.

AMC and the Dodo

FutbolGuru — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:28:00 GMT

AMC. American Motors Corporation. Does anybody remember that one?

They actually made some pretty cool cars. The Javelin and AMX come to mind. Forward thinking for the time, the AMX was a two-seat sports car with a 401 C.I.D. engine. Fast, good-handling. It actually competed well with GTOs, Camaros, Mustangs, Firebirds, Chargers, and other stallions from the muscle car era. Look it up. There’s a following.

Of course there was also the Pacer, the Matador, and who can forget the Gremlin – aka, the Garthmobile. I still can’t decide if it was the ugliest car ever made, or something that could be turned into the ultimate sleeper. But with declining sales in the seventies and AMC’s ill-fated merger with French manufacturer Renault, the company was doomed. In 1987 they were acquired by Chrysler, primarily to get their hands on Jeep, and that was the end of AMC.

I bought one of those Jeeps. It was a 1989 Grand Wagoneer. The one with the wood-grain. Jeep was owned by Chrysler then but the Grand Wagoneers were still manufactured in the same Kenosha facility formerly run by AMC and staffed by former AMC employees and using AMC parts. Still, the Grand Wagoneer was a pretty amazing vehicle. Designed in the early ‘60s, it was powerful, strong, and safe. My wife and two young sons walked away from being T-boned by a semi in one. After pounding the rear fender off the wheel I drove it home.

But the Wagoneer had its flaws. The design was post-World War II so didn’t take advantage of more modern manufacturing techniques. It was never upgraded and once while working on it, I found mounts for the original headlight configuration buried deep beneath the grill. Quality control was poor – always AMC’s Achilles heel. Aerodynamics weren’t part of the equation when it was designed so fuel efficiency was poor. Extremely poor. And it used an older engine design. Much older in fact.

The V8 family engine block used by AMC was originally a World War II-era Packard design. It had a high nickel content that minimized cylinder wear, which was good, but used antiquated casting techniques, which was bad. And it far pre-dated the concept of emissions controls. I don’t even think the original Wagoneer had a PCV valve. So as laws began to change in the late 60’s, placing ever tighter restrictions on automobile exhaust, AMC/Jeep attempted to comply by hanging ever more crap on their V8s to meet them.

By the time I bought my Wagoneer there was a veritable spaghetti explosion of vacuum lines, solenoids, EGR ports, and sensors under the hood. Troubleshooting even minor problems was nearly impossible given the labyrinthine maze of rubber, copper, and metal tubes. AMC, strapped for cash, had never invested in updating either the engine, or the control systems, simply patching and re-patching what was hanging on an already obsolete engine design. The result was disaster, and even pulling off every bit of smog control hardware resulted in a poorly performing vehicle. I know from painful experience that this is true.

Anyone who drove cars during the 70’s remembers that all four American car manufacturers had problems like this, hence the market penetration of better designed foreign automobiles during this period. Fortunately the advent of computer controlled engine management systems and redesigned engines allowed the other American manufacturers to begin competing again. AMC couldn’t make the capitol investment and the rest is history, along with the Grand Wagoneer.

So what’s the point? The point is, the American economy is that Grand Wagoneer. The economy itself is a World War II-era design. It depends on massive consumption by a rapidly expanding, export-based economy. And for many years, like AMC, it was functional and even profitable. But the world in which it formed no longer exists. And the US is no longer an export economy. So over the years, as our economic growth has sputtered, our government and corporate leaders have levied continually more restrictions, regulations, and stimulus plans in order to keep the pistons firing. And now, quite literally, in perhaps the most poignant part of the analogy, economies themselves have been levied with emissions controls. Instead of changing, our economy has become that Packard-based, AMC V8 hidden beneath layers of vacuum lines and marginally functional pollution-control hardware. The result is an economy that runs like crap, can’t be diagnosed, and is unresponsive to repair. Sure there are times when it seems to perform. Through vigorous maintenance and upgrades I kept my Wagoneer running for years. I replaced engines, transmission, carburetors, manifolds. I once redesigned the entire air conditioning system. You name it. But oh, the time I wasted lying on my back in the driveway. And the money I threw away. And the gas mileage was always crap. Life has been much better since I deep-sixed that puppy and went with something more modern. I have a life again.

How long will out politicians call for stimulus plans to revive the economy? How many trillions will we waste on vacuum lines, feedback carburetors, and exhaust gas recirculation before we retool the engine for modern times and redesign the control system from the ground up? AMC paid the ultimate corporate price for their refusal to upgrade. A refusal that turned into an impassable barrier. Has our refusal to fundamentally change our economic engine gone too far? Have we wasted so much capitol on upgrading an obsolete system that we lack the resources and will to build a new one? Have we passed the point of no return? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know the answer to this one: Every day that passes without fundamental change is one day closer to the impossibility of change. And nature has shown without exception that when systems lose the ability to adapt they become extinct.

-Futbol Guru